


For the World to Begin

by jerry_duty



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Coda, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 21:37:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15082250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerry_duty/pseuds/jerry_duty
Summary: "Why wait any longer for the one you love / when I'm standing in front of you?"Hank and Connor reunite in the snow, after the revolution.





	For the World to Begin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glamafonic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glamafonic/gifts).



Typical brick-head move, forgetting his gloves. Hank kicked at the snow dusting the curb. Wasn’t enough of it to knock around. All he managed was to scuff it wet along the pavement. Getting to be so a guy couldn’t make a real melodramatic scene of himself these days. And for what audience, pray tell? He hadn’t seen Detroit so skittish since the last time they’d declared martial law. That shit with ole fuckhead Trump back in twenty-twenty. 

He blew hotly over his knuckles. Skin split on the second knuckle on the right, shit. He’d an idle thought of licking at the red line of blood waiting to come out. He chuffed. Some weird Connor kind of crap. 

The sun was coming up thin and wavery behind the shut-down factory. Hank’s breath spilled out a fog, white and wet and tugged by the meaner turn of the wind across his eyes so he had to squint and duck his chin. He tucked his hand into his jacket pocket and squeezed it in a fist. 

“What the hell am I doing,” he grumbled. Christ. Standing around on the corner outside a food truck hadn’t served anybody in most of a month, like a street dog waiting for a friendly face. 

The bones in his hands ached. His ears, deep in their crannies, felt hollow and blistered with cold. He was too fucking old for winter in Detroit. So, what’re you gonna do about it? Nine years from the minimum retirement age and that was if he felt like eating four for $5 single serving TV dinners till he was seventy and had to go back to work anyway. And then what was he gonna do? Get a job greeting folks into the Amazon Fresh market? Jesus, he’d rather be dead.

At least the sun was up. Yeah. All the better to look at Detroit in her beat up, _remain in your homes until ten a.m._ glory. 

So, Hank, what the fuck are you doing out here? Huh? Cracking the skin on your hands and you know that’s gonna be a real bitch to keep lotioned. ‘Cause if there’s one thing anybody knows about Hank Anderson, it’s that he takes care of his very self. Here you are standing outside the Chicken Feed like Gary’s gonna come down on a golden cloud with a burger in each hand and he’s gonna tell you the thing you already know. “The kid’s not coming.” Now here’s your All-American Grilled Beef Patties. 

Well, why would he? What could possibly entice Connor to come out of that bright-shining tower they took for themselves as sanctuary? Maybe the army’d pulled out, that didn’t mean there weren’t people agitating to bust a toaster. 

Hank closed his eyes. His nose itched from the cold. The cavities under his eyes felt over-hot, like they had all week. Last thing he fucking needed: another sinus infection. He rubbed his thumb along the outside of his nose. 

Five minutes. Five minutes and he’d call it quits and he’d call it quits for good. No more driving up a couple blocks before the barricade and hiking past the U.S. ARMY DO NOT CROSS U.S. ARMY sawhorses. This was it. No more dicking around waiting like a god damn stepchild for Connor to show up with glass shoe in hand.

He watched the breeze pulling the dry flakes of snow from the street lights, the broken down car the army hadn’t bothered to tow. Maybe it was beautiful. He didn’t give a shit. It was a lousy morning, cold and mean, and Hank was tired. He was just low down tired.

More pale fog, exhaled to the day. He’d swing by Al’s corner mart and pick up a couple six-packs on the way to the precinct. Something to look forward to at the end of the day. Every part of him rubbed sore.

Very near to him the snow made soft sound, like as if a shoe had stopped then turned abruptly so the heel scraped. He lifted his head. He looked down the street. 

Connor looked back at him. He’d dusted snow in his dark hair. The strands were half-tousled. His face was still, his eyes bright. Neither the wind nor the chill flushed his ears, his cheeks, the smooth hollow of his throat. He looked, but for the snowflakes spattered in his hair, so precisely as Hank had last seen him that for a singular moment of absolute silence Hank could not believe that he was there at all.

He took a step toward Connor. Connor took a step toward him. The snow whispered under their feet. The sun was a far-off thing, bright and without heat. Hank stopped. He was thinking: that’s you. Connor stopped, too, and what he thought, hell, Hank had never known. He was, briefly, a stranger, a stranger who looked at Hank as if he too were waiting.

Then Connor blinked, and a certain tension pulled at his eyes, and he very nearly wobbled on his feet; and Hank smiled. It almost hurt, smiling like that. Then Connor smiled back, his dark brows lifting and his cheek dimpling.

Hank took two more steps, three. On the fourth he reached out his hand and grasped Connor’s nape and he pulled him to his shoulder to embrace him. Connor fell readily against him. His hands came up to clutch at Hank’s back; his elbows bit into Hank’s sides.

Fuck, kid. Where’ve you been? Out saving the world again? He couldn’t say any of it. He only clutched him tighter, the fine hairs high on Connor’s nape itching at his fingers, the inhuman weight of Connor like a stone to anchor. His footprints receded behind him to the sawhorses, beyond. Had he walked, too? Had he taken a cab as far as he could, or had he walked all the way from CyberLife? Nah, thought Hank, not even Connor. Not for Hank.

Connor rested his cheek on Hank’s shoulder. His hands, too, tightened. Mirroring. There was something about that Hank had read a long while ago. He couldn’t think of what it was or where he’d read it, maybe a National Geographic or some other kinda brainy magazine: Connor had nuzzled past the rumpled collar of Hank’s coat to his throat.

The long, straight line of his nose pressed to Hank’s neck. Hank felt his pulse jump. The heartline in his throat pounded against his skin. Did Connor smile?

“I couldn’t help noticing,” Connor murmured, “that you’ve forgotten your gloves, lieutenant. Did you know the wind-chill is thirty degrees Fahrenheit today?” His breath was manufactured heat, mild, against the hair-specked skin of Hank’s throat.

Hank shoved him away. He meant to, anyway, but neither of them took a step back and his hand lingered, cupping, at Connor’s neck. That was all right. Connor hadn’t let his hands go either.

“Little prick. Yeah, I got an idea of how fucking cold it is out here.” He complained, “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been freezing my ass out here,” and then he cut short not because he’d just realized he was about to admit to mooning around on the snowy streets of Detroit for some punk android who’d saved his life a few times and died in his arms once, but because that punk android was smiling at him so that his teeth showed. 

The left incisor was crooked. The four front teeth of the bottom row were set at very fine odds to one another. Why in the hell would CyberLife design an android with crooked teeth and a dimple in the cheek, firm forehead wrinkles, a spattering of freckles and a single dark mole on the ridge of bone just short of his ear? Jesus. He had another one on his neck, right under his chin.

“You’re very flushed, lieutenant,” said Connor, still grinning. One of those forehead spanning lines winked over his brows. “Have you been waiting long?”

“God, you’re an asshole, Connor.” He shook Connor once, gently, with his hand at Connor’s neck, and then he let him go.

Connor did not let Hank go. He hadn’t stopped looking at Hank. Dark eyes, brown-brown-brown, a perfectly executed spray of black eyelashes around each eye, flicking back and forth as if he were memorizing Hank’s face. Lines, yeah, skin sagging, those bags under his eyes he never managed to unpack, beard unkempt. Hank set his jaw against Connor’s regard.

“Lieutenant,” said Connor. His hands slid at last from where they’d dropped low on his back. He dipped instead his fingers in the coat pockets, holding Hank like so, trapped by his touch. 

His eyes flicked again. A flash of memory: Van Morrison yowling, _making love in the green grass behind the stadium with you, my brown-eyed girl,_ while Hank watched his mom play grab-ass with Dad in the kitchen.

Connor said, “Hank,” and Hank, slouched against the wind, looked back at him. “Hank, I—” That hesitation, the search for words, as if Connor had come against a wall and was thinking of how to get around it. 

Something in Hank’s chest warmed. Something else bubbled. Connor was frowning very delicately, a downtick at the corner of his mouth. He glanced at Hank and then away. 

Oh, shit, thought Hank as he stood there in that motherfucking cold with his hands chapped and his nose and ears aching, and Connor standing in front of him with his own hands holding Hank still and very slowly melting snowflakes drizzled through his hair. Oh, fuck, thought Hank. 

He thought it the way, well, a man who’d gone through the shit Hank had gone through would think it. He thought, I love him, as Connor’s face cleared and he said:

“Thank you. Hank. I—” He ducked his head. “When I saw you at CyberLife, I was … scared for you, but I was also happy.” His lashes lifted. He looked earnestly at Hank. “That you were there. That you came, because you wanted to help me, even if—”

Hank swallowed. He was thinking about his mom and dad listening to Van Morrison, that summer before the divorce. _Do you remember when we used to sing?_ And Cole.

“You can say it,” he said.

“Even if you mistook someone else for me first,” said Connor. He frowned again, his brow pinching. “That isn’t fair. I know it isn’t. My model was specially designed to integrate with humans and build trust among them. And CyberLife would have had access to my cloud-stored data—”

“You’re allowed to be pissed at me,” said Hank, and okay, yeah, he could do this, he could be whatever it was that he needed to be right now, for Connor. Don’t think about it. “But before you ream me out, in my defense, I—”

Connor cocked his head to the side. Some straggling snow cloud had started to shit white on them. A flake dotted Connor’s nose. Hank flustered.

“Well, shit!” he snapped. “I was worried about you. I assaulted a god damn federal agent, and the commissioner’s gonna have my ass on a platter and the only reason he hasn’t already is ‘cause you were off finishing a fucking revolution. And then I don’t hear jack crap from you for what, a month—”

He got louder and growlier was how his ex Shannon put it, as he barreled on. As he did whatever frustration marked Connor, and yeah, that was frustration, Hank didn’t care how the news defined it, androids sure as shit had expressed emotions well before they’d gone off the rails, he knew what frustration looked like on Connor—well, that frustration sifted off him. 

Instead he dimpled, and it was Hank’s turn to derail. 

“I would have contacted you,” said Connor, “but I didn’t wish to do so until I’d figured it out.”

Hank squinted at him and said, “Figured what out?”

“The problem of my deviancy.”

“What’s the problem with it?”

“The problem isn’t with my deviancy,” said Connor, “but why. And I had to be certain before I could pursue a resolution.”

Hank stared at him. Connor looked back at him in that smug, I-know-something-you-don’t-know way he had, and Hank had used to think that was some android elitist Ah, Stupid Human bullshit, but really it was just Connor being a smartass.

Fuck, thought Hank again, and suddenly he was miserable and tired and older than his dad somehow, and he couldn’t stop shivering, and here he was the moron who’d gone and fallen in love with the android sent from CyberLife to assist him with the case. Only Connor had solved the whole damn thing on his own and all Hank did was—

All he did was stand there. Like this. He stood there in front of Connor and Connor looked him and Hank knew he saw the same thing Hank saw in the mirror every morning. 

“Connor,” he said, “I got no idea what the hell you’re talking about. My balls are freezing, and I can’t feel my nose. And if it’s all right with you, I’d like to go someplace with a heater or even a trashcan fire.”

He made to stuff his half-numb hands in his pockets but Connor’s hands were already there. Connor took his hands out of Hank’s coat pockets. Hank grouched, “ _Thank_ you,” but he startled then because Connor took Hank’s hands in his own. 

Connor tucked their hands together into Hank’s coat pockets. He looked up the inch or so difference in their heights. He looked at Hank like… But no. He couldn’t look at Hank like that. Nevertheless, he did.

“I told you, lieutenant,” said Connor. “I’ve solved it. Really, you were instrumental in solving both cases. I could never have accomplished anything without you. The entire reason that I’m still alive is because you were there. But to solve this other case I needed … space.” 

His thumbs inexorably drew soft lines across the dried, chapped backs of Hank’s hands. He did this with a gentleness, there in the crumbs and old patchy fabric of Hank’s coat pockets, a tenderness that made Hank’s heart pulse once, twice, with a slowness like out of a dream. 

Connor leaned forward and tipped his head to one side so he looked up at Hank.

“Would you like to hear what I learned?”

Hank licked his lips. Chapstick. He had chapstick in the car.

“Well,” said Hank. “Why don’t you lay it on me, Sherlock?”

Connor smiled so very slow. So very sweet. His lashes moved blackly over his eyes. The smug bastard didn’t even need to blink. Hank, his feet rooted into the cement, ached.

“I learned a lot of things working with you, lieutenant,” said Connor in that horrible—wonderful—stupid shit voice of his. “One of them, I don’t know that you realize you taught me. It’s the importance of demonstration, as a teaching tool.”

“Connor,” said Hank.

“So I’m going to demonstrate what I learned over the last three weeks.” He peeked out the corner of his eyes at the sky. “Or month, rounding up.”

Hank said again, “Connor,” and tried weakly to pull his hands away. He gave it up. Connor’s fingertips were curling against his palms. 

“Please pay close attention, lieutenant,” said Connor, and he leaned up, and Christ—

Why would a mobile CSI unit kind of an android have such soft lips, or so warm?

**Author's Note:**

> Title & quote in summary are from the song Lay Lady Lay, written by Bob Dylan. I like [this cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwDsoQdzdy4).
> 
> My love Rawles (of Avatar fandom) mentioned she thought, on her first viewing, that Connor and Hank had kissed in the snow. Well.


End file.
